It can be frustrating when things don't work. Please remember two things about MythTV when you run into problems like this: 1) it's in early, early beta (0.15 is a *very* low version number -- on purpose) even if it's working ok for you, and 2) it was free. :-)

Contents

Asking Good Questions

As with all open source projects, while you don't pay someone *cash* for the software, it's not entirely 'free', either. The investment you make, sometimes, is diagnosing problems (sometimes on your own, sometimes with the help of the mailing list), and *reporting them back to the list*. This way, the solution (and if you do this, please try to put [solved] in the subject line so people will be able to spot the solution -- and we wouldn't object to you posting an question and answer here too. :-)

And you're much more likely to get an answer if you've done some legwork on your own, first: an excellent reference for the sort of legwork you might want to *do* is Eric Raymond and Rick Moen's "Asking Questions The Smart Way".

In this section, my approach will be to put a whole bunch of questions and answers on each page, rather than one per page, because the latter approach always frustrates *me* when I'm trying to fix something. I've found that seeing the other questions and answers as you go by can be useful as well.

What They'll Need To Know

The specific examples, at the moment, are those of my machine, and note that *all* characters are significant -- and that many of these things don't change frequently; creating a file with your setup in it for mailing list postings can be useful. I'm going to make this into a Wiki Template, so you can easily create a subpage here from your Home Page, for quick reference.

Once you have assembled all the necessary information, which may include the contents of several log files (the frontend, backend, and pertinent parts of the system logs), you need to know where to go to ask questions.

Before or After?

The important thing to know about a problem when you're trying to help someone fix it is: was the system (mostly) working and the problem is new, or have you not gotten the system working yet.

Where to Ask

So, now that you know what to ask, and what information people will need to help you diagnose your problem, and you've done some of your own legwork to figure out the most likely causes, you need to know where to go to ask your question.

There are three places, in ascending order of immediacy, that you can go to ask questions. Each has advantages and disadvantages, both for you and for other people.

IRC

If you have an IRC client program, and know how to use it (that's beyond the scope of this document [I've *always* wanted to say that :-)]), you can visit the MythTV users IRC channel

(Note that there's another channel for developers, which has a name that does not end in -users; it's topic typically reminds you that it is not a user support venue.)

Advantages

It's faster: if there's someone around who knows what is causing your problem, you might be able to get an answer instantly.

Disadvantages

There may *not* be someone around who knows were your problem is coming from. If you *do* get an answer, there's no record of it -- as there would be if you'd asked on a mailing list -- so others can't benefit from it.

Best For

Lightweight questions, especially those about installation and compiling.

Not So Much

Long involved questions that are dependent on your installation and it's parameters.